AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Monday, June 28, 2010

On the surface there seems to be some confusion about Israel’s relationship with the US. On the one hand we have Israel’s Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, yesterday telling Israel’s diplomats in Jerusalem, “Relations are in the state of a tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart." The remarks mainly refer to Obama’s stance on settlements in the West Bank and building in East Jerusalem.

On the other hand, however, we have two countries united in standing against Iran and what seems to be a joint build up of forces in preparation for a confrontation which will involve both the US and Israel. To compound the notion of confusion, at about the same time as Oren is sounding off about relations with the US over the Palestine issue, America’s top military man, Admiral Mike Mullen, is in Israel to confer with Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defence Minister, and Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel’s Chief of Staff, and is telling them that ‘he always tries to see threats and challenges from the Israeli angle”.

There is a simple explanation for this apparent contradiction in US policy toward Israel.

Obama cannot be seen to be caving in to Israel when it comes to resolving the Palestine issue and US efforts to create a Palestinian state and so, for the sake of public opinion, needs to be seen resisting Netanyahu’s insistence that settlement building and building in Jerusalem continues. Of course, Netanyahu’s insistence, in turn, is designed to placate Zionist public opinion.

The fact is that once the final confrontation with Iran has taken place, the whole question about Palestine’s future, settlements in the West Bank and building in East Jerusalem becomes academic. Israel will, so they hope, have defeated Hezbollah and Hamas and occupied south Lebanon and the Gaza, together with a full occupation of the West Bank, while the US will, so they hope, have bombed Iran to the negotiating table and regime change. The US will accept Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza and south Lebanon as fait accompli.

There will be no Palestinian state. The US will accede to Israel’s creation of a Greater Israel. The West will support Israel and the Arab states, having witnessed the destruction of the Iranian regime, will become utterly compliant.

That, at least, is what the Israelis and the US hope will happen.

The alternative could be that the Israelis and the US don’t get it all their own way. Israel is a very small and, therefore, very vulnerable target. Any threat to the existence of Israel may cause them to lash out with whatever weapons they have, in which case…

The OneState binational solution is now the ONLY solution. Jews and Palestinians supported by the rest of he world must demand it.

While Israel’s war against Iran has absolutely nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear weapons program – Iran doesn’t have one and the Israelis and the US are fully aware of that – Israel and the US will need to launch any attack against Iran by first attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to maintain the illusion that the casus belli for the war is, indeed, Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Since many of Iran’s nuclear facilities are in the north-west corner of the country, it should not be surprising that Azerbaijan be used by Israel and the US as a springboard to launch their attack against Iran. However, once the initial attack has been launched, US and Israeli air forces will then likely concentrate on pounding Iranian political and defence institutions for the purpose forcing Iran to capitulate and sue for a peace through the UN which the US will conditionally concede to providing Iran rids itself of President Ahmadinejad and gives up its nuclear program.

But, while the attack on Iran will be seen by the world as the main event, the real purpose for the war will be happening on Israel’s doorstep.

At the same time as Iran is being attacked, Israel, using the excuse of pre-empting retaliation for attacking Iran, will attack both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza and then move to occupy south Lebanon up to the Litani River and the Gaza Strip. Israel will also likely fully occupy the West Bank.

This is the scenario that the US and Israel would prefer to see happen; a quick overwhelming move against all of Israel and America’s enemies that concludes with the defeat of the Iranian regime and, thus, regime change, together with the demise of Hezbollah and Hamas. This then will give the Israelis a free hand in creating a Greater Israel that ultimately includes the Gaza Strip, south Lebanon up to the Litani River, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. It will also provide the US with an even stronger ally in the Middle East and also a neutered enemy.

But can it work the way the Israelis and the US plan?

Invasion of Iran by the US is out of the question, (though the insertion of some special forces is highly likely in order to co-ordinate air strikes). Iran is a vast country that is some three times larger than Iraq. The US, considering its current ground troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan would not be able to effectively invade Iran. It would have to rely on an overwhelming aerial bombing campaign in order to prevail.

The instant any attack is launched against Iran, or Hezbollah or Hamas, there will likely be instant retaliation against Israel by at least Hezbollah and possibly Hamas. Both entities would, by this stage, realise that this fight will be to the finish. The fighting therefore will be intense and fearsome and there will be many casualties – mostly, of course, civilians. In a worst case scenario, depending on the intensity of the bombardment of Israel by Hezbollah, Israel may threaten the use of nuclear weapons against Lebanon unless Hezbollah cease their rocket attacks against Israel. Likewise, if Iran retaliates with a rocket attack against Israel, both the US and Israel may threaten the use of nuclear weapons against Iran. In the very worst case scenario, if Iran or Hezbollah used chemical or biological weapons, Israel and /or the US would actually use nuclear weapons with little or no warning in retaliation.

Whatever happens, a war against Iran will have devastating consequences one way or the other and for all sides.

It’s time for the peoples of the world to stand up and be heard before it is too late.

It seems inevitable that the Iranian ship steaming up the Red Sea toward Suez is likely to come across the US/Israeli war flotilla coming the other way and that this is likely to happen in the next day or two. What happens when they do confront each other could well determine the future of the Middle East.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

I should imagine that Israel and the US are quietly seething that China and Russia have decided not to veto further UN sanctions against Iran. Of course, they can’t actually be seen to be seething, indeed the opposite; they’ll have to put on a brave face and claim a victory.

What China and Russia’s ‘yes’ vote effectively does is deprive the US and Israel of the opportunity of attacking Iran any time soon. It also effectively allows Iran to call off the deal it struck with Brazil and Turkey thus leaving Iran with 1.2 tonnes of Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) that it would not have had if the Western powers had accepted the Iran-Brazil-Turkey deal. Now, instead of having been left with only 1.2 tonnes of LEU in its stockpile, it still has 2.4 tonnes which Iran now intends to enrich itself to the 20% level of enrichment required to produce isotopes for medical use.

Since the sanctions are almost ineffectual – which is why Russia and China went along with them in the first place – one might say that Israel and the US have been hoisted by their own petard. Certainly, they now have no excuse to attack Iran – and they’ve left Iran with more uranium than they would have if they’d have accepted the Iran-Brazil-Turkey deal.

It’s been almost a year since the Iranian elections and the unrest that followed. The West had hoped that by helping the opposition in Iran with propaganda alleging that the elections had been rigged and with financial support organising post election demonstrations, complete with agent provocateurs, that some kind of popular uprising could be fomented. It didn’t work. The Iranian government cracked down on the violent dissenters that threw petrol bombs at the police and security officials and the whole so-called green revolution collapsed.

What the West failed to understand about Iran, and continues not to understand, is that the people of Iran will stand together when it comes to external threats – especially from Israel and the US government. The mistake the West made during the Iranian elections was to misunderstand what those that were dissenting were actually dissenting about. Sure, they wanted greater transparency, and sure they want an economy that gives them jobs, and sure they want a better standing of living. But all these things are just standard everyday domestic problems which all nations at some time or another have to get to grips with. But the West failed to recognise this. They mistook the unrest, more out of wishful thinking than anything else, for a desire of the people to overthrow the entire Iranian regime when all many of them really wanted was just a change of government – a subtle difference which the West simply failed to appreciate.

Israel and their Western allies make no bones about their desire to affect regime change in Iran. The US and Israel would like to replace the theocratic regime with a Western-friendly regime that is compliant with Israel’s demand to cease supporting Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. This would then allow Israel to realise their Zionist dream of a Greater Israel that would include all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and south Lebanon up to the Litani River.

All that stands between the late Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu, the spiritual leader of Israel’s Zionists who died just a couple of days ago, and his Zionist dream and its realisation, is Iran. The Rabbi’s most fervent follower, the Zionist Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, is determined to see it come to fruition.

The only way such a dream can come to fruition is through a final confrontation with Iran that also allows Israel to attack Hezbollah, Hamas and the West Bank and to occupy and eventually annex the lands. The ONLY way they can do that is with the help of their allies in the West, particularly, the US.

The latest sanctions move by the UN with the support of China and Russia has thwarted their plans. Israel will need to find some other casus belli with which to start their Final Confrontation with Iran.

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the attack on the Gaza flotilla and the killing of activists on the high seas in international waters by Israeli commandos was an extremely well planned act of aggression designed specifically to murder pre-selected people that were on board the vessel. Turkish sources and the media have revealed that a list prepared by the Israelis and lost by one of the Israeli commandos in the melee that followed their boarding of the vessel shows various activists who were on board and marked down to be killed in a series of targeted assassinations.

In light of the fact that these deaths are now known to have been planned in advance and not as a result of an unfortunate string of spontaneously tragic events it is clear that the go-ahead for the operation must have come from the very top of the Israeli government, Netanyahu. Furthermore, it is very likely that the operation was discussed with Emmanuel Rahm, Obama’s Chief of Staff, who happened to visit Netanyahu while Rahm was in Israel for his son’s Bar Mitzvah last week. If that is the case, then it cannot be ruled out that Obama himself did not know of the pending operation, nor, indeed, the full extent of what was about to happen, just as Bush had been aware of what was about to hit the Gaza Strip prior Israel’s launch of Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009.

Given that almost everything that happens in that part of the world is intrinsically linked geo-politically, one can see an ominous pattern beginning to emerge that does not bode well for the future of the region. The link between the fact that the ship upon which the activists died were Turkish and the fact that Turkey with Brazil had only recently helped facilitate the exchange of nuclear fuel for Iran cannot be ignored. Nor can Israel’s stationing of nuclear-armed submarines in the Persian Gulf off the Iranian coast last week be ignored. The fact that the Israeli submarines are sharing chunks of sea with a fleet of American warships in the Gulf also cannot be ignored.

Israel has also increased its illegal and provocative overflights of Lebanon to the point that the Lebanon military has recently opened fire on the Israeli aircraft. This sort of activity is usually associated with testing ones enemy’s air defence capabilities. On top of this, the Israelis have also been increasing the frequency and intensity of attacking Gazan targets.

Israel has become increasingly marginalised by the international community ever since the atrocity of the 2006 Lebanon war when modern technology exposed and highlighted their unacceptable behaviour of bombing ambulances, hospitals, fleeing civilians and the dropping of cluster bombs. Overt support for the Israeli desire to strike Iran was diminished when the Republicans lost the 2008 Presidential election and the Israelis have now become desperate to somehow find a casus belli to strike before the world catches on to what they are actually up to and deprive them of the opportunity for good.

The attack on the Gaza flotilla and the deliberate killing of activists on the high seas in international waters by Israeli commandos was an act of aggression designed specifically to provoke a violent response from Palestinians.

The Zionist Israeli government are desperate to begin their war against the Iranians and their allies Hezbollah, Syria and Hamas. One can only hope that the Iranians, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Syrians do not oblige the Israelis by responding to the Israeli crimes that have been committed aboard the Gaza Flotilla.

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About Me

is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
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